Barefoot Weekends: Running and Ríos

Last weekend all of our adventures were with our friend Iris’ host family. Saturday night a bunch of us headed over to her family’s rooftop to assemble pastelitos en hoja, which are the Dominican version of tamales. Instead of having a corn masa, you grate a bunch of their starchy veggies (víveres), like plátanos, yucca, ahuyama, batatas, and more. We cut a bunch of plátano leaves from the yard to boil then use as wrappers, like the corn husks on tamales. To the masa we added meat and raisins (or just raisins for some of us vegetarians). After wrapping them up, we threw them into the pot over the fire we had going to boil for an hour or so, and then there are lots so a bunch of people can eat at the same time. In our case, that was on the roof, under the stars with a big family and lots of friends to share with.

The next day, my family-sharing-friend Jenny and I headed back over to Iris’ house to spend the day in the campo (country) with her family. We rode in the back of a pickup and got dropped off by a little group of houses called Rollo Tabaco. We all got one of the family friends Pedro to take us on a hike to the top of a big hill, and saw the cacao trees and yam area that he farms – the place the yams were planted was on a steep hill high up, and had been "cleaned." That’s how they refer to their slashing and burning farming technique, which is very prevalent on this eastern side of the island: there is quite a bit of deforestation here. We paused during our hike to eat some wild sugar cane and to suck the sweet slime off the seeds of the cacao after you break them open. We ate a little lunch at Pedro’s house which included as many chinas (sweet oranges) from his grove of china trees as we wanted. Everyone here peels them with a knife starting at the top and moving in circles until the whole skin falls off in one spiraling piece; my current goal is to acquire that skill, but I have a long way to go. Then we "let our blood cool down" before we headed to the river – because, if you go by what all of the doñas (women, moms) say here, your face or body will be frozen or paralyzed mid-spasm when your hot blood meets too quickly with cold water. Looks like I’ve just survived all these years by pure luck!

To the river and back, some of us got to ride Pedro’s horse, which was really hard to get on without any stirrups. Playing in the river was incredibly beautiful and fun especially with all the kids. But, it was getting cloudier, and lately it’s been raining almost every day here. We got back to a family friend’s house before the hard rain came, and then we wondered if the pickup truck would come back like he said he would; the road crossing the river isn’t above the water even in normal times, and if the downpour made the river rise, we’d be trapped for the night. He did show up, and we had another drenching ride in the back of a pickup. We Peace Corps girls had brought our moto helmets in case we had to take one, so we wore those for warmth. After the long ride back, Jenny and I got dropped off on the main street a few blocks from home, and we saw our "dad" driving by. We shouldn’t have been surprised, because he’s absolutely everywhere we go for some reason, but this time we weren’t going to pass our chance up to get a bola (free ride) home! He didn’t recognize us crazies in the cascos at first, but cracked up when he realized who was climbing into his front seat.

This host dad of ours is a crazy guy: he’s maybe not all there, but is always up to interesting things. This Wednesday we made a bet with him about whether it would rain in the afternoon or not. If it did, no meat for him all Thursday; if it didn’t, no concón for us all Thursday. (Concón is the part of the rice that sticks to the bottom of the pot, and is dark and crunchy. Jenny and I are both addicted.) He lost, and as I walked by his cement block factory in the downpour, he yelled across the yard, "No meat tomorrow!" Jenny and I made sure to stop by his friend’s cafeteria he frequents to make sure they didn’t sell him any meat that day, which all of his friends found pretty funny. It turned out to be a long and difficult day for Rolando, and a glorious one for us. . .

Last week was the last week of our morning internships, and the kids in Tri and my computer classes were really cute and huggable all Thursday. The teacher they have to return back to doesn’t know any of their names and prefers to lecture even the 8 year olds with big words at the table instead of having them actually use the computers.

This weekend was packed full again: we got up early Saturday morning to plant some trees with a volunteer’s youth group. We did it down by the river that runs through town, because a bunch of the trees had been knocked down in the last cyclone that had passed through. That volunteer had a housewarming party for her youth group and us that night, which featured dominos and dancing (like usual!).

Sunday was a fantastic day. I got up early for an outdoor Palm Sunday mass right next to the cool church in town, where I ran into some people I knew. I got home in time to change fast and hop into our dad’s truck to head to the next little town over where there was a "marathon" going on that day. A guy at a little cafeteria saw Jenny and I going by earlier in the week and told us about this race on Sunday that supposedly was a 10K and started at 10 in the morning – that part made me doubt that it would happen, because it’s already really hot by 10:00. But we decided to check it out, and Jenny, Tri, and I got our host dad to take us. When we arrived in town we knew it was on: we got photographed getting out of the cars and found people warming up. There was no entrance fee, but it was a big race with people from all over. My goal was to finish the race, being my first 10K ever and not having trained or anything! The runners looked like Kenyans, though, and we were all really nervous. It was amazing, because I’ve only seen a couple runners at all in the time I’ve been here, but they all came out of the woodwork for this race. When we started talking to people, it sounded like nobody really knew what the route was or how long it was exactly. As we lined up at the starting line, we also saw people in skirts, people in jean shorts, people in socks, and people barefoot. We looked at each other and thought we’d do fine. Some of those barefoot people beat us! It ended up being a Dominican 10K, which was something around 8K. The heat was killer, and so were the big hills. A lot of the Dominicans would walk up the hills and then pass me on the downhill as I cursed them in my head. Luckily there were people waiting with water to shower us along the way, especially when we ran into El Seybo. One woman got me with a bucket so big on my back that it pulled my running shorts halfway down, and as I pulled them back up and gave a little "Whooo!" all the people by the bucket lady laughed. We got lots of fans cheering for us americanos. Chi had the best time and came in 9th among the men 20 and up, Jenny came in 3rd in the adult women’s category, and I got 4th place in the same.

The fun for the day wasn’t over yet: we ended up going to a river with our family and neighbors as soon as we got home from running which was the best river trip yet. Now that we’re entering into Semana Santa, who knows what will go on this week!